


Innocence

by Fantasticbeastsfanaticlove



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, F/M, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-11 22:12:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17455235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fantasticbeastsfanaticlove/pseuds/Fantasticbeastsfanaticlove
Summary: Leta Lestrange has been rescued from the grasp of Grindelwald.The problem?She has no memory of who she is.This is the story of Leta discovering who she is and learning to fall in love with Theseus again.





	1. Chapter 1

August 23, 1928

I’ve been told to record my thoughts in a journal to help make sense of everything and keep my Healers updated on my progress. It’s strange, really, the things I remember. I remember how to read and write. I remember the names of ordinary objects and smells, yet I can’t remember my own name nor the names of the people around me.

Actually, I do know my name. The Healers told me after I had woken up. It’s Leta. Leta Lestrange. But it doesn’t feel like my name. It feels like a name that was given, like a character that I am not. I have a body covered in scars that I have no idea how I got. I feel like an alien, slipped into a random corpse and forced to live the rest of my life inside it.

It isn’t any help that everyone refuses to tell me anything about my life before my memory was apparently wiped. I’m left with nothing except those who claim to know me before.

I’m currently living in a small apartment in America with a young American woman. She has pale skin, hair cut short, and always wears dark clothing, but her eyes are a soft brown color, and they always carry a weary look in them. Her name is Tina, and she is an Auror. I don’t know what Aurors are, but the word sounds oddly familiar.

Tina lost a sister, though how her sister was lost I may never know. I sleep in her sister’s old bed, which is pink and still smells of her perfume. I wear her old clothing, which is only a tad too big for me, and I stay at home when Tina’s at work.

The Healers wanted me to stay with someone in England, though I don’t know his name. He and Leta were apparently very close.

I shouldn’t refer to Leta as a separate person. I am Leta. But she feels like a separate person. So that’s how I’ve always thought of her.

But I didn’t want to face him. I wanted to spend time on my own, with someone Leta didn’t know. I didn’t want to be crushed under the expectations of someone that I used to be.

So I begged to move in with Tina in America. I knew her because she would visit me often, and when I asked the Healers if she knew Leta, they replied that she knew me briefly, but not for long.

So she agreed to take me back to America with her, much to the disappointment of my Healers.

Why does everyone want me to have the same life that Leta had? I don’t know anything about her. Maybe this is my chance to become someone new. 

I dream about that sometimes. What if I wasn’t bound to Leta? What if I were my own person? 

If I were a new person, maybe I would be free to explore this new body, this new me, without any expectations over my head.

Maybe.

 

August 25, 1928

My Healers read my journal, and one got upset. One of them told me that there were people in England who loved Leta, and what would they think when they discovered that I was trying to be someone else? 

The other, Emma was her name, reassured me. She told me to write more about this other me compared to Leta, and maybe that would give me a bit more of a clear head.This new person, she explained, was a culmination of my thoughts and desires. Emma told me to come up with a name for this new person, and I told her it was Delilah. I read the name in a book, and thought it was such a pretty name, and it was the only name I could remember at the time.

“It’s your life,” she told me. “Look at both Leta and Delilah with equal thought before making a decision.”

The problem with that is I only know Leta’s name, and I know everything about Delilah. I know her dreams, her fears. They are the same as mine.

Tina keeps a picture in her closet. I never got to see it until today. I got curious, and so while she was at work, I opened her closet to see it.

It’s a picture of a man. His hair is too long and falls over his eyes. He fumbles with his fingers and occasionally flashes an awkward smile, but the smile never reaches his soft eyes, which have no color in newsprint.

I feel like I know him. I can’t explain why. It’s something about those colorless eyes that pulls at something in me.

Was this the man Leta was so close to? The one in England? I’ll have to remember to ask my Healers about him.

But if this is the man Leta was close to, I don’t want anything to do with him. Tina looks at that photo every night, and for a second, the weariness if gone from her eyes and replaced by something brighter. 

Did Leta ever take that away from her? 

 

August 27, 1928

I learned about the man I described. His name is Newt, and Leta never had a relationship with him very much the way I have a relationship with Tina. He’s an author who writes about magical creatures.

I feel relieved. I can now look Tina in the eyes again without feeling guilty.

 

August 29, 1928

My Healers want me to go back to England and get to know the people from my old life. 

They told me that I need to stop referring to Leta as a separate person, and to not bring up Delilah around the people I am going to meet. The people are Newt, and then his brother, who was apparently the person who I was originally supposed to live with before I begged to move in with Tina. Needless to say, I’m terrified to face him.

Tina’s accompanying me. We are currently on the boat to England. I can’t stop thinking about these people, whom I don’t know, yet they know me, and they have expectations for the way I’m going to act and talk. 

I’m going to disappoint them. Because I’m not who they want me to be.

 

September 1, 1928 

I’ve finally met them today at the docks.

Newt’s eyes are hazel, and they seem almost grey against his coat. He’s painfully shy, and he hardly even looks me in the eyes. But Tina embraces him like an old friend, or maybe something more.

But Theseus is something else entirely.

Theseus is Newt’s brother. He has the same lips, nose, jaw, and brows as Newt, yet he’s wildly different. Theseus’s hair is dark and combed out of his eyes, which are a bright blue. He’s much taller than me, and it’s frightening. Yet, he seems gentle in the way he carries himself.

He looked like he wanted to hug me, and I was grateful when he didn’t, because I wouldn’t know what to do if he did. He just shook my hand.

They took us to Newt’s house, where they made tea for Tina and me. The entire time at the apartment, I could feel everyone staring at me, particularly Theseus, whose soft blue eyes never once left me. 

He tried to make conversation with me, but he seemed tense, and it was clear he has no idea what to talk about. He left early, claiming that he had work tomorrow, and hardly even looked at me when he did.

The shame I felt in that moment burned through me like wildfire.

I had done everything the Healers had told me. I didn’t mention that I was anyone else but Leta. I answered every question Theseus and Newt asked me honestly and carried through the evening with perfect manners, yet I failed.

I failed, and nothing I would have done would have been enough, not for Theseus or Newt.

Not unless I suddenly remembered who I was, and no matter how hard I tried, I never could.

I ended up bursting into tears when he left, and poor Tina, who was clearly having a good time with Newt, had to take me to our hotel room earlier than planned.

She didn’t say a word the entire time home, but I could feel that she understood. When we got to our room, I locked myself inside the bathroom and took along bath, trying to forget everything.

When I was in my bed, I heard Tina sigh.

“I know it’s hard, Leta-“

At that point, I had enough. I was tired of Leta, a person who only seemed to ruin my life and haunt me. So I snapped.

“Shut up! I’m not Leta! Why can’t anyone get that?! No one cares to get to know me! All they care about is Leta!”

I started crying again, and Tina wrapped her arms around me and just held me.

It was not a good day. And tomorrow, I still have to get up and face Theseus again. And again, until the two weeks are over, and I can go home with Tina, and maybe if I’m lucky, have my memory wiped again.

 

September 3, 1928

Tina told me that she was going to have dinner with the Scamander brothers, and I should come too. I didn’t want to,but I knew how upset Emma would be if I didn’t go, and besides, I had spent all day yesterday at the hotel room by myself, and was in need of some fresh air.

Theseus didn’t talk to me at first. He kept his distance and I kept mine.

It wasn’t until I went out to stand outside for a moment when he came out to talk to me.

“Beautiful night isn’t it?”

I didn’t answer at first. I expected him to leave, but he remained.

“Am I different?” I asked, unable to bear the question anymore.

He blinked, glancing at me.

“What do you mean?”

“Leta? Am I different from Leta?”

I’m not supposed to refer to Leta as a separate person, but at that point, I didn’t care. I wanted to know.

He thought for a moment.

“Well… kind of. Your hair is different, for one thing.”

“Different how?” I pressed.

“You used to pin it short because you hated the feeling of long hair. But you’ve grown it out, it seems.”

I reached up to touch my hair, which had grown to my back now. I had never thought about cutting it short. 

“And you like your tea differently than you used to. Lots of milk. Your eyes have changed. They’re the same color, but they’ve seen a lot less.”

There was silence for a bit before I spoke again.

“What were we? Before the memory loss, I mean.”

Theseus hesitated. 

But I was so tired of no one telling me anything. Of being treated like I was too delicate. If they wanted me to so desperately fall back into my old life, why is it that I know nothing of it?

He finally spoke.

“You were my fiancé. We were going to get married last June.”

There was a full minute of silence before I left and headed back inside.

I didn’t talk to him the rest of the evening. I needed time to think.

Because if there’s anything our little talk outside showed me, it’s that I’m different now than what I used to be. It’s like I’m a new person in the body of an old one.

And Theseus is in love with me.

But maybe not with me. Maybe with the idea of me.

In romance novels I’ve read, there is always something about how “No matter the circumstances, I would choose you in a heartbeat. In another universe, I would find you, and I would choose you.”

No, he isn't in love with me. He’s in love with Leta, a woman who used to live in this body, who liked her hair short and her tea with no milk, and who had eyes that had seen so much more than mine.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leta sorts through her confusing feelings towards Theseus and starts having nightmares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Sorry, I know I haven’t been updating. I’m having a difficult time right now, and I won’t get into specifics about it.
> 
> Anyway, please enjoy and leave comments!

September 4, 1928

People underestimate the importance of the past.

They look back on experiences they’ve had, and they know who they are, what defines them as a person. They know their flaws and strengths, hopes and dreams. They know what makes them laugh and cry. Looking back allows them to move forward, to stride forward in life with a purpose.

Leta had that. She knew what she wanted, and how she was going to get there. She had found a man she loved and was going to spend the rest of her life with. She had a job, and hope for children.

I have none of that.

I am a blank slate. I have almost no past to look back on. I don’t know what I want in a man, or if I even want one at all. My hopes and dreams are, strangely enough, to find them. To find a purpose, a place, in the world around me. 

Everyone can say they had an event in their life that defined them. I can’t say that.

I am a child, inside the body of a fully grown woman.

 

I went to go see Theseus during his lunch break. We took a walk through Diagon Alley. I used this opportunity to buy a new wand, planning to buy it with the small amount of money I had. Dogwood, eleven inches, with a unicorn hair core. Mr. Ollivander, who sold Leta her wand, watched me wave it through the air and create silver ribbons, which wrapped themselves around the shelves.

“Ah. Curious,” was all he said. Theseus paid for the wand, which I thanked him for profusely. Theseus had to leave, but he wished me the best of luck with re-learning magic.

I then went to another shop, where I bought two books with a number of spells that I could learn. Tina and I spent the rest of the afternoon practicing spells. I learned how to transfigure my dress, and make two cups of hot cocoa using only magic. 

Tina was extremely proud of me, and didn’t criticize the fact that the hot chocolate didn’t have any sugar, at least not out loud. She did add some sugar in later though.

That night at dinner, Theseus complimented my dress, which I had made to be a soft peach color. I wonder if he was thinking about Leta or if he was seeing me.

 

September 5, 1928

Theseus took a day off of work to spend time with me. I asked him a lot of questions, and I learned that he was an Auror, like Tina. I asked him what and Auror was, and he explained it was a person who solved crimes and arrested criminals. 

He turned on some music and taught me some of the more modern dances, which I enjoyed immensely. 

Theseus’s hands are surprisingly soft considering what he does. Newt’s hands are calloused, but Theseus’s are smooth and clean, and he uses them gently when guiding me through the steps.

At one point, he just pulled me close and held me there. I hugged him back. He smelled of cinnamon cologne and vanilla, and the scent brought a feeling of familiarity.

That happens sometimes, mostly around Newt or Theseus. Anything can cause it, from the smell of books in a book shop to a certain texture of fabric. It’s this feeling in my chest, that I once knew this scent or feeling. 

In his arms, surrounded by his scent, I felt something that I’ve never felt in my short life. It’s not just a feeling of familiarity, but a feeling of home. In that moment, I was where I belonged.

He was mumbling something, and I realized with a jolt that he was crying. 

You know, things have been hard on him too. He lost the love of his life, and just as he was ready to move on, I show up, with a face that is a mirror image of Leta’s, but different from her. It’s like he only has a part of Leta, and no matter how hard he tries, he’ll never get her back.

Maybe it would have been better to stay away, not only for me, but for him too. 

I couldn’t pick up on what he was mumbling, but what he was mumbling wasn’t meant for me. 

He stopped mumbling after a bit, and just held me close until his breathing evened out and he wasn’t sniffling as much. 

When he let me go, his eyes were red, his cheeks were tear stained, and he looked exhausted.

I left that night with his scent still lingering in my memory.

 

September 6, 1928

We went over to Newt’s apartment for breakfast today. Theseus had slept late, so when he emerged from his bedroom, his hair was messy and he was in his pajamas. I liked him better like that for some reason. I’ve only ever seen him in a suit and with his hair combed back. 

Did you know that when he doesn’t comb it back, it falls over his eyes like Newt’s does? Not as extreme as Newt’s because Newt grows his hair a lot longer than Theseus’. Or that he wears ugly pajamas? They’re hideous, but I love them.

We kept our distance at first, not looking at each other directly, and not speaking unless it was a, “Please pass the salt,” or “Thank you.”

After breakfast, Theseus and Newt left to get dressed and comb his hair. Tina started messing with my hair, and before I knew it, Tina was braiding my hair. 

“You look nice with long hair,” Tina commented.

“Better than with short hair?” I asked. It ended up coming off more sharp than I intended, and I felt a flash of regret. Tina only flinched.

“Short hair, long hair, whatever. As long as you like it,” Tina said, tapping her wand against my scalp. When she took her hands away, my hair stayed in it’s braid down my back without coming undone.

“Leta used to wear her hair short, apparently. I’m sure it looked nice,” I said.

“The Healers said you’re not supposed to refer to Leta as a separate person,” she said. Not in a mean way, just in a very matter-of-fact way.

“What do you think?” 

“I’m not a Healer, Leta. I don’t know what’s best for you.”

“But what do you think?”

Theseus had entered the room then, and he was grabbing his shoes. He cast me a glance that I couldn’t read.

I want to talk to him again. Not about Leta, but about me. I want to know if he sees me any different than he saw Leta.

My Healers are going to have a field day reading this when I get back.

 

September 10, 1928

I visit Theseus every day during his lunch break and after work. I do most of the talking, but he’s a good listener. He listens to me talk about books, my life in America, the weather, and just about everything I can think of.

I missed a few days in this journal because I couldn't think of anything to write since every day has been the same. It’s only four days until I’m going back to America, and I’m conflicted.

Much of this, I now realize, is me trying to decide which things from my old life I want to keep and things I want to leave behind. 

I’ve always thought of Leta as some kind of enemy, a ghost who wouldn’t leave, wouldn’t let me go. But none of this is her fault. It isn’t Theseus’s or Newt’s or Tina’s or even mine. I need to stop blaming them. They lost someone who they loved, and they just want her back.

And it isn’t my fault or Leta’s fault that I want to change. It’s no one’s fault except the one who erased my memory.

 

September 11, 1928

I asked Theseus during his lunch break if he would be willing to keep in touch after I left. I told him about how I was trying to decide what things to keep from my old life and what I want to leave behind. He listened the entire time, and he agreed to write to me after I left. 

I’m glad. He is one of the things I want to keep with me. 

I wonder how things would be different if I had lived with Theseus. Maybe we would have been married by now. Maybe I would have gotten my memory back.

I’ve been told in several books about the power of a kiss. Perhaps a kiss with Theseus would be enough to bring back a memory. Perhaps it would be enough to create a miracle.

But maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe it would only get our hopes up, only to have them crushed again.

Still, I can’t stop thinking about it. Kissing him, I mean. And I’m ashamed to admit that in most of my dreams, he isn't’t kissing me because he wants Leta back. He’s kissing me because he loves me, and he isn’t trying to get me to remember something.

It’s too much to ask for, I know. I should feel lucky just to have him as a friend.

 

September 12, 1928

I’ve started having nightmares about a baby, wrapped in white, sinking into the ocean while I scream, thrashing in the water to try and reach him, but I can’t.

The dream is familiar, and I know it’s from Leta. 

Whenever I do have that dream, I end up crawling into bed with Tina and listening to the sound of her breathing until I calm down enough to slip into sleep.

I told Theseus about them, and he said that Leta had some dark secrets. He asked if I wanted to know them, and I said no. Maybe someday I will want to know, but for now, I feel as though I would be imposing on Leta’s privacy to ask about it.

 

September 13, 1928

I kissed Theseus.

We were out walking just like we normally do, and it just sort of happened.

It’s my first kiss, but for him, it was only one of many that we’ve already shared.

I’m leaving tomorrow, and I don’t know if I want to. The kiss opened up something new between Theseus and I, and I have this horrible feeling that leaving will kill this new thing before it has the chance to grow.

He kissed me back, but what if it was to just be polite? Have I ruined what we had before? In his mind, was he kissing Leta? Or was it meant for me? What if he’s embarrassed, and he doesn’t write back to me?

I’ve ruined it. I’ve ruined it all.


End file.
